The Doom of Damocles; A Bitter Bite

YOUR! BRAIN! IS ON FIIIIIIIIIIRE!

We are headed back to Ceoris when a Salubri shows up and says if we don't eat him the world is going to end and we tell him that we've heard that line before and it's not going to work this time. Then we have a group seizure… or vision.. or vision of a seizure and the other guy on the road is in it. We see something get thrown through a giant portal. We get back; Saorise drains the one guy and the other one takes off. We decide to continue to keep the cell hidden because it can't be returned to Tremere.

Man, those cats were fast as Rapidity!

I am going to go ahead and rule that all of this needs verification so no highlights

Mostly because my notes start out like this:

1249- capital moves to Budapest

Kick out Moors William 2?

Behari seize power Papal Bull ceelexpnab

-Radu wants salt mines purged

-Mongols @ black sea

-Malk found a descendant of J

Basirice Bukar?

catacombs extended

cell

1255 winter rapper

Agatha & Someone

Jean shows up and starts a fight.

Sooooo… I think we had just found out that Harlan was sneaking around killing people for the sheriff because:

Agatha comes in and asks about shadowy figure. Las claims it is her. Jean claims that he has just shown up to better manage us. Agatha leaves and red eyed guy shows up and says someone has to fight him. Quintas goes out.

Ventrue-creepy other- creepier

Thurs- set up interview w/ salt guy

Fri- Jareck sends Harlan to kill some peeps in Brujahland. Go to the University. Favored & Semi-important. Alaric childer of Agatha- still in torpor [Turns out, this is the guy Quintas apparently has a blood feud with now]

Tuesday- Go to Church Elysium. Large group of Lasombra and Setites. See Radu and Hassan.

[We go to the cave that Cappadocians are supposedly having trouble clearing of ghosts]

Head down to creepy cave and its super quiet we go into waterfall cave and get jumped by 3 guys.

[So then we convince the bat guy to show us the cell and we copy the map. We tell him that we will keep him safe from the Cappadocians. Sadly, there are other things we cannot protect him from and we inherit the cell.]

8III we fight a werewolf

[And… we meet with Agatha again about available domains. We can take the Shadows for a Trivial Boon to Ventrue clan for each Tremere with hospitality for more than a week.]

We meet Prince Bukar for 5 mins and he grants us permanent hospitality as a minor clan and longs as we:

Monitor and report on the Cappadocians

Provide magical support for next 100 years

Defend the Praxis

[I think we also fought the Salt Queen here? or maybe that was somewhere else?]

Foot in Mouth Disease

We roll out to Bucharest and are attacked on the way and Simon and Quintas are torpored. We get to the tiny house that our contacts Albanus (R9) and Isabella (A6) are posted in. Isabella tells us that people are usually sent here as a punishment but that we supposedly are here to do something other than die as everyone else that comes is wont to do. We ask if she knows who is killing the Tremere off and she says that she suspects that it is due to one person but then won't give us any more info. Albadus comes out and also gives us no info except that there are only suppossed to be 2 Tremere in town at any one time so the official story is that we are passing through and then we will try to secure some task from the administration that will buy us some more time. He then asks us a riddle that Saoirse answers correctly so she is promoted to A4 and Alginus announces that they are going to immediately go see the Chamberlin, Teadora, to let her know we are here. They walk about an hour into town and go to a half built cathedral where Teadora is gruesomely interrogating someone who is chained and nailed to the floor.

Abacus speaks to Teadora and she demands to see all of the Tremere so he turns right around and heads back leaving Saoirse behind. Teadora's brother Radu offers to introduce Saoirse to her so that she can be not immediately murdered. Teadora interrogates Saoirse and ends up nailing Saoirse's foot to the floor and ask her questions.

We all finally get there with Abladdin and try to draw attention from Saoirse. We are insane so we bring along Alina and Harlan disguised as Tremere. Laschishka consults with a local Brujah, Ventrue and Malkavian to see if one of them will speak for the Tremere so that we can get hospitality. Alphose is being mind controlled by Teadora so he offers no help and neither do the locals so Lasch randomly picks the Brujah, Nikita, to speak for us.

Nikita calls in some boons against the administration to get us hospitality for the night and Teadora adds in the condition that she also gets custody of Alonzo and Nikita agrees. Ablat is grabbed by some guys who appear out of no where and disappears. We get Morgan free and GTFO of the cathedral. Nikita escorts us home and lets us know that we are currently living in Ventrue territory but that she will relocate us now that we are under her protection. So we have been in town for about five hours and the regent has been kidnapped, Saoirse has been tortured and we have pissed off the clan that has been keeping the Tremere alive thus far.

We let Isabella know that Aflac has been taken by Teadora and that we will find out at sunset whether or not we have hospitality. Hector and GHOULHORSE! show up at sunset and walk right in to let us know that we have hospitality for two weeks, including the night that has just passed. After consulting with Isabella we decide to head to one of the Elysiums to try to smooth things over with the Ventrue. Isabella will ransack Alfonso's study to figure out what we need to do now that he is gone.

We speak with Nikita and she seems very smug that we picked her instead of the Ventrue. We talk with some locals for a bit and Alina makes friends with a Toreador Talon [can't find where I wrote down his name].

After speaking with both Agatha and Nikita it is agreed that we should remain under the protection of the Ventrue and we pay Nikita some boons and Saoirse gives her some magic neosporin. Agatha tells us that Agrobar was helping the Ventrue gather blood, create magic protections [?] and gather information about the Cappadocians.

Meanwhile.. back at the ranch…

Isabella tells Harlan that she has found some records that indicate that Algor is supposed to meet with X for a blood exchange.

Quintas wakes up in a tray of blood and creeps his way out of the basement. [something happens] Some dudes burst through the door and attack everybody. Isabella takes an axe to the head and Harlan smooshes on of them and the other runs out the door.

The rest of us get back and try to explain to Quintas what has happened while he was napping. While we are arguing about this Hector shows up with GHOULHORSE! and lets us know that the Cappadocian Deputy is going to walk in so we may want to straighten things up. Harlan drags dead guy and Isabella to the basement and Alina makes it look nice and clean inside just in time for Marta to walk in.

Marta advises us of where the Elysiums are, the library at the University and the Catacombs, and that the rack in underneath the Catacombs. Marta senses bloodstain that used to be a henchman and sucks his soul out of the floor and interrogates it before eating it. We admit that we have been attacked and Marta tells us who the henchman said sent him and where he had generally come from.

Quintas decides to track henchman and he sets out with Laschishka and [Saoirse's cat] to follow glowing footsteps in to the city. We all hop around the rooftops until we get to a 3 story house with a trap door and a chimney. Then Marta shows up downstairs with a bunch of ghouls and ghosts. We try to get out of their way but the ghouls see us and we surrender to them and talk to Marta. Lasch sucks up to Marta to seem less suspicious and Marta finds out that Quintas is magically tracking the henchman. We pretend that the spell requires both of us and Marta decides that we can continue and she will follow us with her posse.

We go back to the roof and down the chimney to the catacombs. We go through there to a secret door and Marta's people swarm in and take everybody down. Quintas gets a boon from her.

We then do absolutely nothing for another twelve days.

We go back to Teadora and cash in the deputy's boon to be allowed to stay for ten years. There is no resistance to this which is completely non suspicious.

U MAD BRO?

Some parts of my notes are kind of sketchy- I highlighted things that definitely don't make sense so feel free to fill in if you know what that is about.

We visit Walterstein in the Oubliette (which is shaped like a d8?) We essentially have nothing new to tell him so he tells us to report back in 48 hours. We take the sword to Stan and find out that it was stolen about 48 hours ago. Harlan examines sword and then drops it like its hot bc it is super powerful.Lafayette knows that we are investigating for Walter. We go to the armory and try to check out some weapons but Kaval says to GTFO unless you have a permission slip.

We head to the tactical tower and there is a guy in front of a warded staircase and talk to Sera. She says that there is conflict along the road to Bucharest by guerrilla Tz. She takes one of our black coins to misreport our conversation. She lets us know that captives are normally interrogated and then killed, not stored long enough to escape. We go back to Walterstein and he is cleaning some live skeletons with beetles. We ask him for stuff. He tells us to check it out and promotes Quintas to A1.

We head to Rainments and see Juicestine who gives Quintas some dark crimson robes with some occult stuff written on it. He says that Quintas will get his magus mark in 2 nights. We all get a weapon or some armor. We walk out the door and run into Ravenia. She promotesSimonto A2 so we go back in to get him some robes too.

Go by Lafayette and Saorise talks to him in his study with all the researching acolytes. He asks her to recommend some things to the herbologists. Also tell Walterstein that the blood was let a fortnight ago.

Visit Hera the alchemist and Saorise does her thing. She does not get promoted for actually doing something other than standing adjacent to a regent.

Bop over to the stables and get some horses from Gregor. We stop by the spot we were attacked and find a ironwood box with dirt in it. Harlan senses a cave to the NW but Quintas doesnt believe her.Simon out ranks him so we run up there to prove its real. Quintas loses his shit and Harlan has to restrain him until Saorise can calm him down. We find some footprints coming out of the wall.

We get to Court and talk to Ivan. he points us to the Grotesqueries and we find out that a hooded Tremere came by 3 nights ago and set up staggered patrols that only pass by the spot we were attacked two times at predictable times.

We go to Sven, the regent of Court. He acts suspicious of us and seems to know that someone escaped form Ceoris. He asks how old we are and then sends us out to Cross.

The regent of Cross is Yara. We read her a message that says we are to spearhead the investigation and some mysterious message "it was let out at nine o'clock". We go see Jessup.

Talk to Marcopolo the mail guy in Court to send a message to let Walterstein know where we are. We do nothing for a week. and then head back to Court.

Sven gives us a scroll to give to Walterstein. We drop that off and Alina talks her way in to a tour of the Oubliette. Then to to talk to the Ceoris Gargoyles to see if they have been given any weird orders. Christian totally cock blocks us.

We take the box to Lafayette and he touched it and confirms that guy who attacked us had it previously. We ask him to touch the dirt and he freaks the fuck out and says some stuff about Transylvania, music, lights, end times. Two guys with white eyes and douche hair show up and beat him into torpor and drag him out. They promote a rando guy to R1 to take over and we are thrown out.

We try to set a trap by telling our three suspects different times that we are going to be in the cave talking about who is guilty. We then proceed to be attacked on the way to the cave. We go to Sven in Court because we think that it had to be one of the Ceoris people who set up the attack based on timing.

Sven takes a vote on who did it. We find out it was all a <s>dream</s> test.

::7 year long training montage::

We go back to Court and find out that Sven needs a decorator. We are all A3 except for Saorise who is A5. Sven says that we are now to go to Bucharest and set up a domain/Chantry, staff it and head back. We are not to take any political positions.

How I met your Regent

We get conscripted by Ravenia to go to Court to see a gargoyle about a Ravnos. We get there and pick up some mail from Keval. He lets us know that there is trouble on the southeast side of Court. We head back and get ambushed by an aryan mother fucker that we manage to ash in battle and we bring all of his stuff back to Ceoris with us. Ravenia is not concerned about our near death and asks for a report on the ashes. We take the ashes to Gregor who helpfully describes the guy we saw. We bring the mail to the Quartemaster and end up delivering it to Lafayette who sends us to talk to Walterstein about the dude who attacked us. Walterstein flips his shit and wants to know who else knows about any of it. Every person we meet wants a written report on everything.